...and now for something completely different:

Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, Massachusetts distributed old school chairs to over forty local artists to decorate as they see fit. These chairs are going to be auctioned October 23, 2005 to benefit the museum. I took two chairs and made this hybrid that I call School's Out. The springs are fairly strong. I weigh 175 lbs and I just compress the chair to the bottom, but my kids float a few inches off the stops. The lower seat was sanded and dyed a deep blue, while the back is dyed a deep green and both are lacquered. The frame is steel sprayed with a black enamel. The springs are new and are very securely attached. The balls on the feet are real, and yes, it is a lot of fun to sit on. If you are at all interested in leaving a bid I am sure you could email them about it from their site.

Male & Female & Winslow & Neil

Tonight we had a male model at the open figure session. I hadn't realized how trained I had become at drawing the female nude. Specifically how I looked for spatial clues based upon anatomy, and relied upon visual devices that just were not happening with a man, like the importance of the curve of a woman's breasts to guide my drawing of the rest of the figure. It showed me I am as guilty as anyone of the visual assumptions I spoke of in the last post.


He was a decent enough model, although he did noticeably drift in the long poses... The corner of an arm that wasn't visible is there the next time you look, that sort of thing.

Lately this blog has become more of a figure drawing studio than a plein-air place as it started. More than likely I will be posting some more plein air work soon, who knows, maybe with a figure or two. One of the many things I do to carve out a living is to occasionally work as a freelance museum preparator. Tomorrow I am going to work at the Clark Art Institute helping to hang an exhibit of their Winslow Homer collection. Homer typically painted the landscape with the figure, and knowing myself, I will probably drive home full of ideas. Although this is a very nineteenth century thing to do, it is not unheard of in contemporary art. One of my favorite contemporary painters is Neil Welliver, who not only painted the landscape, but early on at least included the nude. Neil Welliver died this past April, and was a major influence on my becoming a landscape painter. Another great collection of his work on the web is here. Be sure to scroll through all three painting galleries.

A Leap of Faith.

Drawing from life is an under-valued mental excersise. There was a time in this country when everyone who went to secondary school received training in the act of drawing, and could draw well.... yes... everyone. I don't bring this up to rant about the state of education in America today. I have carefully avoided the political in this blog as there are plenty of people covering those bases already, half of which I agree with. My point is that the act of drawing can be taught and more importantly it has real life value. What is the value? Drawing is a way to excersize visual acuity, visual memory and a practical lesson in not taking anything for granted. It teaches how to see what is really there, not what you think or wish were there. In other words, it teaches how to see, not just how to look. What is the difference? To See is to Look on purpose. Most people have no idea what they are seeing at any given moment. We live in a world of our own making, and don't even know that it is a fabrication. We are now taught at an early age that all tree trunks are brown and roads are black. It takes a genuine leap of faith to trust your eyes over your brain, so look again.


I did these drawings tonight at the figure drawing session. They are in bistre and sepia conte, and black compressed charcoal on Strathmore 18" x 24" drawing paper. This model was young and had an air of vulnerability about her, despite the tattoos I chose not to draw. She held three two minute poses, three five minute poses, three ten minute poses, two twenty and one fifty minute pose. She was very good and did not strike any awkward or contrived poses. The first one is a twenty minute and the second is the fifty.

...go figure

If you visit my old website linked at the right, you'll see that in the recent past much of my work has tended toward fine detail, especially in the murals. I can easily get lost in it and, satisfying as the experience can be, my connection to the end product is ultimately about "skill" and patience, not raw experience and emotion. Recently, I have been working very hard at loosening up a bit, giving the medium itself a longer leash and letting it romp in the grass, so to speak. There is an element of surprise every time: sometimes good, sometimes not so good; sometimes edifying, sometimes disturbing. It's an overly used sentiment, but works created this way are more like "children" in that they come from the parent, but have their own personalities which sometimes make us proud, and at other times make us cringe. I made this painting last night at the open figure session. I find myself cringing, but unable to stop looking at it either... any thoughts out there?

Studio Painting

I made this painting, Main & Federal, last night. It is about 8" x 24"oil on birch veneer plywood. Creating a realist painting from a photograph shouldn't be a compromise. The artist has two choices, make a painting of the photograph, or use it as just another tool. Photographs do a fine job of providing certain visual information, particularly detail and texture. Color is more problematic as is value, the range of lights to darks. The real test for the artist who wants to use a photo rather than copy it is to be able to ignore the photograph while looking at it.

Photography as an art form can manipulate the viewer in ways that painting cannot. A photograph, as a mechanically produced image, has a detached quality that we rightly or wrongly trust more than images that have been filtered through the head of a fallible human. Most people will judge a realist drawing or painting by how much it looks like a photograph. Of course all artists, including photographers bring the full weight of their raw emotions, prejudices, and personal history to the images they make, whether they know it or not. We certainly can admire and enjoy artful nude photography, but the experience is very different than viewing a well made figure drawing or painting. The photo has a certain kind of immediacy because we trust it to be honest, even though we know it could be manipulated. More to the point though, and probably to the chagrin of most photographers, most photographs can be admired on one level without too much effort from the viewer. What then do we get from a drawing of a photograph? An admiration of the artists skill? An admiration of the photographers skill? Should a realist drawing or painting really judged by how much it looks like a photograph?

A painting is a very different thing than a photograph, and ultimately a picture that is painted conscious of this fact is always going to take more effort on the part of the viewer. A painting from a photograph is also a very different thing than a painting from life. When I work from photographs, which is only when necessary, I tend to paint more loosely and with bigger gestural strokes than when I am painting from life. This may be an over reaction to being disconnected from the place depicted, but I don't think so. I want to use photos as just another tool to pull all my human fallibility, raw emotions, prejudices, and personal history out of my head and pour them onto the canvas.